Soldiers’ deaths become political
How did Trump’s response to the deaths of four U.S. troops in Niger go so wrong?
How did President Trump’s response to the deaths of four American troops in an ambush in the African nation of Niger go so wrong?
WASHINGTON — President Trump kept silent on the deaths of four American soldiers for nearly two weeks, while finding time to tweet about “fake news” and Republicans’ fundraising, attack Puerto Ricans and a Republican senator, among others, and keep up his complaints against protesting professional football players.
When he finally spoke up on Monday about the deadliest combat incident of his presidency — and then only in answer to a reporter’s question — Trump started a furor that engulfed his chief of staff, predecessors from both parties, a Florida congresswoman and now one of the grieving families of the soldiers he was being asked to honor.
Trump’s slow and sloppy response to the death of the soldiers ambushed Oct. 4 in Niger, in northern Africa, illustrated the hazards of his extemporaneous governing style, the disorganization within his White House and his refusal to back down in the face of criticism.
“It’s exactly the wrong way to handle this kind of situation,” said Leon E. Panetta, who served as Defense secretary under President Obama and White House chief of staff for President Clinton.
By Wednesday, the president was battling publicly with a Democratic congresswoman from Florida and the mother of the fallen soldier, Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson, over the alleged insensitivity of his condolence call the day before.
The president’s actions shifted the normally private and somber functions of a commander in chief consoling grieving military families into the very public political arena. The spat with the Johnsons and their congresswoman, Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida, followed Trump’s statements on Monday and Tuesday suggesting his predecessors hadn’t often made similar calls and questioning whether Obama had called retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, when he lost a son in Afghanistan in 2010.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed the White House’s military protocol office for the delay in contacting the four families, the media for sensationalizing the issue and the congresswoman, who was with Johnson’s wife, Myeshia, when she received the call from Trump, for politicizing it. But others in Trump’s circle and outside observers turned some blame toward Trump and his advisors.
“This is a failure of the president’s staff,” said Sam Nunberg, a former political advisor. “The president would make these calls if it got to his desk. Ironically, his new chief of staff, John Kelly, who makes a point that he controls all information flow to the president, has failed the president here.”
A former administration official who demanded anonymity criticized Wilson but also suggested this was another of Trump’s self-inflicted wounds. “There are just some obvious do’s and don’ts,” the official said.
A White House official confirmed that a national security aide had drafted a statement about the deaths a day after the ambush that Trump never delivered; aides decided that Sanders instead would read a statement at her daily news briefing.
For Kelly to be drawn into the controversy was particularly poignant, given his own loss of a son and his wellknown reluctance to talk about it. Sanders would not say whether Trump had spoken with Kelly before invoking Marine 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly’s death to imply criticism of Obama, but she did say that Kelly was “disgusted by the way this has been politicized.”
The four soldiers were killed while on patrol with about 20 Nigerien troops. The deaths of three — Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39; and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29 — were announced soon after the attack.
The Pentagon initially did not release information on the ambush or the fact there was a fourth soldier missing. The surviving soldiers noticed his absence after they had pulled back from Niger’s border region near Mali, which is notorious for drug smuggling, human trafficking and myriad extremist militias, including allies of Al Qaeda and Islamic State. Johnson’s body was found two days later by locals after an all-out search had been launched.
Sanders mentioned the first three soldiers, not by name, at a news briefing the next day and the fourth a day later, telling reporters that Trump had been updated by Kelly “constantly on that situation as it evolved.”
But Trump did not speak or tweet about it for 12 days — until he was asked during a news conference on Monday why he had not said anything. Rather than respond directly to the question, Trump tried to divert blame to his predecessors, saying other presidents had not made it a practice to call victims’ families, while insisting that he had.
Former staffers to Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton were furious, and publicly attested to their former bosses’ contacts with grieving families. Trump’s staffers were caught off guard. The former administration official called it a “cringe moment.”
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said the level of presidential attention to families of fallen soldiers depended in part on the scale of casualties and the technology of their eras. It was impossible for presidents during major wars to personally console tens of thousands of families, he said, while modern presidents carry a greater burden to weigh in both publicly and with private condolences.